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XXXAN AUTUMN SONG
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198

XXX
AN AUTUMN SONG

TO EUGENIA

Summer hay and harvest
Come and gone again:
Ah! the months are measured
By the yellow wain!
As the stately cargoes
Down the valley sway;
Golden wheat-sheaf mountains,
Hills of scented hay.
Yearly for her children
Earth, the Mother, pours
Thus in rick and linhay
Her sustaining stores:
Heedless if the ploughman
Reap the seed he sows,
If with grass and leaf-bud
He o'erlive the snows.
Man she loves; but loves not
With a mother's heart;
'Tis the race that only
In her care has part.

199

For the Whole providing,
Deaf to each one's fate,
She our tears and laughter
Eyes with smile sedate.
—Down a twilight ocean
Men like swimmers go;
Some sweet face beside them,
Some few voices know.
Faint and firm the Pole star
Beaconing overhead,
O'er the heaving billows
Draws a silver thread.
Who knows when his nearest
'Neath the flood shall go?
Who, when Death may call him
From the night below?—
—Shall we see the spring-time,
Hear the bird again?
Ask no more, when autumn
Brings the harvest wain!
Swaying down the hillside,
On the hedge it weaves
Lines of golden wheat-straw
That outlast the leaves:
—Shall we see the spring-time
Bud and burst again?—
Ask no more, Eugenia!
Ask no more in vain!